“People don’t actually read newspapers,” media theorist Marshall McLuhan famously noted, “they step into them every morning like a hot bath.”
Indeed, reading while bathing has ever been my choice. No matter if the edges wrinkle from wet fingertips or a page slips out and drowns. Paper will dry. But losing your laptop in the tub while reading online is certain disaster. Score one for old media.
Other great advantages to printed matter are portability and foolproof technology. You’ll never need tech support. Pages can be folded to fit in your pocket or used as a bookmark. Coupons clipped, comics and editorials ripped out and posted on the refrigerator to alert one’s household.
Of course, with digital media you can spam anyone in the world. Is that a plus or a minus? Call it a draw.
One of the great perks of my 22-year career at Weber County Library was daily access to a slew of national papers, each with its own seasoning of slant and focus. Comparisons were instructive.
Well do I remember remarkable changes occurring to The Wall Street Journal after its acquisition by Rupert Murdoch. Rather than cheapening the product as most people feared, wily Rupert aped its upmarket competitor, The New York Times. Color photos! Deluxe weekly magazines. Regular roundups of popular culture with excerpts from books by name brand authors.
But the real race comes down to NYT’s limited access to free online articles versus The Journal’s subscriber-only business model. In this best of all worlds, both models win.
The Salt Lake Tribune is forging its own path as a nonprofit organization with a weekly print edition, full-service online subscription and partial online access for free. Questions? I’m sure they’re as curious as you about how it all shakes out.
Count me as one of The New York Times’ growing list of online subscribers precipitated by the onset of the Trump interregnum. I used to think I couldn’t afford the luxury of an online subscription to a daily source of verifiable information. Now I realize I can’t afford not to.
Since retiring, I spend my summers in the northwest, subscribing to The Seattle Times. Like The Trib, The Times is the regional voice of responsible journalism. All the social changes Utah is experiencing now are happening there — except times a zillion.
Love it or hate it, Seattle is the city of the future. The daily Black Lives Matter battles being fought in the streets was riveting drama with consequences still unresolved. Then the Seahawks kicked off their season winning five in a row. Recently the ‘Hawks have been on a losing streak and it became clear that this is not going to be their year.
Returned to Utah now for the past four months, I have found it difficult to abandon the kind of inside info only a local paper can provide. The Seattle Times’ loss was The Salt Lake Tribune’s gain when I switched subscriptions last week. Such a volatile market is a consumer’s paradise.
Garbage in, garbage out, is the golden rule of computer coders. What you input determines the success or failure of your program. The same iron law extends to even so lowly a job as that of the daily journalist writing for your local newspaper. Verifiable fact-gathering matters.
Call it a newspaper. Call it a locally published resource of verifiable community information. Call it “the first draft of history.” Call it .org.
When you really need to know who, what, when, where, how and, most importantly, why, what you’re talking about is your daily paper.
Bob Sawatzki
Bob Sawatzki is a retired library specialist living in Ogden and on Whidbey Island, Wash.
